I'm watching the Yankee game and also some Wimbledon tennis matches. Baseball is a team game and tennis is for individuals. Tennis players have personal coaches. Baseball has team coaches during games, who appear far too often, especially the coach for the pitchers who are performing something that's pretty similar to what tennis players do, standing there all by themselves.

But tennis coaches are forbidden to not even flash signs during a match much less speak to a player, not even between games or sets when the players are resting.

Eliminate all on field coaching during baseball games and get those silly base coaches the heck off the field. Football and basketball players do not have coaches on the playing areas. Baseball is beyond ridiculous.

And the batters are now walking away from the plate between pitches again. Remember way back to the beginning of the 2015 season when new commissioner Manfred, the A-Rod Slayer, made his wimpy attempt to eliminate the dreaded dead time between pitches? It never really happened and the pace of play is as bad as ever.

Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Rain. Last night's game at Yankee Stadium was scheduled to start at 7:05 PM but started late because of fear of rain. Then much of the late innings were played in the rain. Finally, the game was stopped in the top of the 9th inning at 10:40 PM and did not resume for a few more hours. It was completed at 2:44 AM this morning. That's seven hours, 39 minutes from the scheduled start time for nine innings. Oh, Texas won 9-6.Constitutional amendments for team sports. Friday, June 8, 2012Team sports really means baseball, football and basketball, the only sports that count.Why constitutional amendments? Obviously, the dominant professional organizations (MLB, NFL, NBA) have not understood the urgent need for fundamental reform. Constitutional amendments will provide the much needed framework for the reforms. The professional leagues will then need to change their rules to conform.1. Regular season games must end within two hours. Playoff games may have an additional 30 minutes for overtime.2. No overtime in the regular season.3. No trades during the season.4. Arenas must be dry.5. Temperature must be reasonable for the sport.6. Teams in a division must play the same opponents the same number of times.7. Teams must play at least 66% of games in division.8. Divisions must have at least six teams.9. Replays must appear on the large screen in the arena at the same time they are broadcast.10. Players may not unload on other players.11. Playing areas must be uniform.12. No pre-season games.13. The entire season including playoffs may not exceed 180 days.14. No common player draft.15. Playing rules must be the same for all teams in a league.
___________________________________

The current strike zone is basically belt to knees. If you were going to cut it in half, why not use the top half, which is also closer to the eyes?
_______________

Watching from the only live perspective shown in recent decades, we now take for granted that the catcher must get as low to the ground as inhumanly possible and that the plate umpire will follow along.

In the 1950s and into the 1960s the default camera orientation for live (this was before replay) pitches was from behind and above home plate. Then cameras were placed in center field at differing angles to provide a different perspective. Gradually, the center field view became the default and finally the view from behind the plate disappeared.

This change influences our understanding. As much as pitching has evolved into a high power activity with velocities in excess of 95 miles per hour (mph) common, even these flame throwers try to throw at or below the batter's knees. They nibble at the knees.

Aside from whether batters would have more difficulty hitting high v. low pitches, the point here is that until the strike zone is automated, it makes more sense for it to be high rather than low. It should be much easier for the plate umpire to call strikes from belt to shoulders, than belt to knees. After all, the umpires eyes are also up there. And batters may now have trouble with high pitches because:
- they are not required to swing at them
- they must protect against those ridiculous low pitches.

With the belt as the bottom, not the top of the strike zone, if the pitch is low, the batter still has a fighting chance of hitting it anyway, instead of flailing away as we see far too often now at pitches diving down into the dirt from the knees. Who likes that?

Saturday, June 25, 2016

You hear that kind of stuff often. It's usually vague and unfocused. It's late June, so replacing a major league player in the starting lineup with a minor league player suggests either:
- the team is so far out of contention even for the second wild card spot in the tournament that it doesn't matter
- the player to be replaced is doing so poorly that the minor league guy can't be much worse.

That second scenario has been voiced recently by a Yankee fan I know. The idea is to cut Alex Rodriguez and replace him in the lineup with 24 year old minor league outfielder Aaron Judge, who has zero major league PA. Current Yankee right fielder and top hitter Carlos Beltran would make room for Judge by replacing A-Rod as designated hitter (DH).

Yankee fans started wanting Judge on the team last year, without bothering to even check his stats.

Judge had good numbers in the lower minor leagues but I require a Candy Gram informing me that a player has done well for a season at AAA to take that player seriously. Unfortunately, Judge flopped in his first exposure to AAA pitching. In the second half of 2015 Judge had OPS .680 in 260 AAA plate appearances (PA). OPS is On base plus Slugging averages.

In 2016, thanks to a recent surge, Judge has OPS .812 in 310 PA, boosted by his 14th home run last night. That gives Judge about a full season at AAA: OPS .752 in 710 PA. Good but not anything special.

Maybe the most weight should be given to his most recent performance. But that greatly reduces the sample size.

But there is also the common sense factor: won't his performance suffer batting against major league pitching for the first time? Probably. But how much?

I'm not a statistician and do not have the data to even try a detailed analysis. But I'm guessing that teams consider all that. This post will take an anecdotal look at four prominent recent Rookie of the Year batters: two from 2012, two from 2015.

Mike Trout: Trout's highest minor league level of a substantial amount of PA was AA. Trout started his 2012 rookie season at AAA but had only 93 PA before being called up. At AAA Trout's OPS was 1.091. For this analysis, Trout's AA numbers from the previous year will be used. Trout has a tiny performance improvement over his AA numbers in his rookie season.

Bryce Harper: Like Trout, Harper started his rookie season with his first exposure at AAA: 84 PA, OPS .690. Harper was called up anyway.

Carlos Correa: Correa started his rookie season with 246 PA in the minors with these OPS:
AA 1.185
AAA .794

So far in 2016, his OPS has dropped from .857 as a rookie to .811.

Kris Bryant: The oldest of the four, Bryant dropped the most from minors to rookie. So far in 2016, his OPS has improved from .858 as a rookie to .887.

The minor league level is the highest in his final "full" season.

minor

minor

minor

minor

rookie

rookie

age

level

PA

OPS

PA

OPS

dif

%dif

Trout

19

AA

410

.958

639

.963

-.005

0.52%

Harper

18

A-AA

452

.894

597

.817

.077

-8.61%

Correa

20

AA-AAA

246

1.007

432

.857

.150

-14.90%

Bryant

22

AA-AAA

594

1.098

650

.858

.240

-21.86%

penalty %

10

15

20

Judge

AAA

570

0.752

.677

.639

.602

2016

24

AAA

310

0.812

.731

.690

.650

It would seem that the best that Yankee fans could hope for in the first major league season of Aaron Judge would be OPS .731. But lower than .700 seems more likely. Here are the OPS for the current Yankee outfielders and Rodriguez:

Judge might hit better than Rodriguez in 2016 but I doubt it. Plus, there is no way that the Yankees would eat A-Rod's contract for this season and next. Oh, and A-Rod is only five home runs short of 700. Who in his right mind would rather see Aaron Judge in 2016 than Alex Rodriguez?

Friday, June 24, 2016

David Ortiz is the biggest bopper so far in 2016. Offensive WAR should probably not be included but it's is, which puts the diminutive Jose Altuve among the big boys. Below the top ten lists for oWAR, SLG, TB, HR is a matrix with points for prominent batters: rank 1 gets 10 points, 2 gets 9 points, etc.